Morris: Obama Lacks Courage to Halt Iran

The U.S. Navy should interdict gasoline shipments to Iran to pressure the regime to halt its development of nuclear weapons — but President Obama doesn’t have the “courage” to do that, veteran political analyst Dick Morris tells Newsmax.

The best-selling author and regular Newsmax contributor also said the United States is more vulnerable to terrorist attacks because Obama has “terrorized” the anti-terror investigators. He also asserted that the president’s tax credit proposal for job creation should not pass.

Newsmax.TV’s Kathleen Walter noted that Iran declared itself a “nuclear state” on Thursday, and asked Morris whether he believes the Obama administration has allowed this to happen.

“I think we have to apportion blame both to Bush and to Obama,” he responded. “I personally think Bush is more culpable than Obama because he was inactive for a longer period of time.

“The United States has absolutely refused to get tough with Iran, and as a result Iran is going to sooner or later develop nuclear weapons — unless Israel is gutsy enough and willing to accept the losses it would incur in attacking.

“There’s a very simple thing we could do to stymie Iran. Forty percent of its gasoline is imported” because the Iranians don’t have the refineries to convert enough of their oil to gasoline and they must import more, mostly through Dubai.

“The United States could interdict that flow of gasoline,” Morris said.
“It has a navy. We could just stop it, or persuade Dubai not to be complicit in sending it. Obama will not take that step. He talks about all other kinds of sanctions that are not meaningful, and won’t take that key step.

“Because he doesn’t have the courage to do that, or the commitment to do that, Israel may have to take action on their own and attack Iran, with devastating consequences to Iran and to Israel.”

Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview this week that he expects more terrorist attacks in the U.S. similar to the attempted Christmas Day bombing. Walter asked Morris for his response.

“Pessimism is always the bodyguard of liberalism,” he declared.

“When liberals are ineffective at stimulating the economy, they tell us we’re in an era of permanently high unemployment. And when they’re ineffective in defending us against terrorism, they say, oh, we have to expect a lot of different attacks. They try to get people to believe that their own inability is not the cause of the problem, but the overall environment is.

“The fact is that, under George W. Bush, we were safe for seven years. Now under President Obama, we’ve had 13 soldiers killed in an attack on Fort Hood, and a passenger airliner would have been blown up but for the action of a few brave and aggressive passengers. Now the vice president’s warning us to acclimate ourselves to this kind of stuff.

“The reason this is all happening is that Obama has made the anti-terror investigators, not the terrorists, the object of government scrutiny, and he’s terrorized the investigators.

“Therefore they’re very much afraid, when they get data on somebody, to send it on or to put him on a no-fly list or to send it to the military. They’re concerned that they might be racially profiling someone or violating someone’s civil liberties, and the result is it doesn’t get done.

“As a result, these terrorist slip through the cracks. It’s not fate, it’s Obama’s policies that are causing this.”

Continuing his assessment of the Obama administration’s handling of the terrorist threat, Morris said: “I think the thing that is really helping al-Qaida is that we released the details of the interrogation of the Nigerian underwear bomber. We said he’s giving us all kinds of information.

As part of a job creation effort, the White House is proposing offering employers a $5,000 tax credit for each new worker they hire. Walter asked: “Do you think he will get the support he needs to get that measure passed?”

“I think probably he will be able to pass that bill and aspects of this job package because I’m not sure Republicans will be unanimous in voting against it,” Morris said.

“They should, though. This is a bill that should not pass.

“We need to understand that you do not create jobs by spending money. You don’t even create jobs by borrowing money and giving it out as a tax credit to businesses.

“The reason businesses are not creating jobs right now is that they have no access to credit. And the reason they have no access to credit is that the government is hogging it all.

“Commercial lending in the United States is down by more than 20 percent over the past year, and government borrowing is up by 41 percent in the same period. So as long as the government hogs the loan window and pushes the private business that’s trying to create jobs aside, no tax credit in the world is going to be particularly effective at creating jobs.”

The U.S. Navy should interdict gasoline shipments to Iran to pressure the regime to halt its development of nuclear weapons but President Obama doesn t have the courage to do that, veteran political analyst Dick Morris tells Newsmax.
The best-selling author and regular...